


mea maxima culpa

by redeye



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, And Kakashi is Fed Up, Angst, F/M, In Which Sakura is a Married Woman, Infidelity, Jealousy, Post-War, Pregnancy, Sasuke is Perpetually Absent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 11:55:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4705133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redeye/pseuds/redeye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><br/>He hates that Sasuke’s always on his mind and rolling off his tongue here.<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	mea maxima culpa

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Warning for spoilers — this is essentially a spin on the canon ending. Meaning there is SasuSaku, which I did not tag, because it's been portrayed in quite a negative light. No offense meant to those who ship it, you just may want to tread carefully here. The rating is purely for smut, because I am trash. Enjoy!  
> 

 

It’s the hour of night for secrets.

Konoha is blanketed in still silence, but there’s one place sleep doesn’t touch. The only sound in the room is their breathing — agonizingly slow, and even, the sound of restraint. It’s an unspoken agreement that keeps them both silent as pleasure consumes them. With no outlet it comes on too strong, her body tightening so violently it forces the air out of him in a harsh breath against her neck. She shivers, and he pulls out hastily to finish anywhere but inside of her.

He tries to move away, but her arms surround him, and after a moment’s hesitation he settles gently on top of her.

Her voice is soft in his ear, warm and sated. “You don’t have to do that, remember?” The implication hangs quietly in the air. It’s not as if there's a risk anymore.

His head drops. “…Yeah. Habit.”

They’re left in an awkward pause with the reminder of who their usual partners are. He doubts Sakura knows or would care that this is his only divergence from a long series of shallow flings. She’s in no place to judge his choices considering her usual is her husband.

As the afterglow wanes, it grows colder in the dark room, the silence less comfortable. He’s found her a towel to clean up with and settled back onto the bed, closing his eyes. But the late hour is catching up to him, and he can’t risk falling asleep here. He stares up at the ceiling instead, unblinking, while Sakura absently strokes a hand over the subtle curve of her belly.

“Does he know yet?”

He sees her go still out of the corner of his eye. After a long moment she shakes her head, and lets it fall lightly against his shoulder. It feels too natural by far.

“No. I haven’t spoken to him since he left for the mountains. It’d only been a couple weeks so I didn’t know.”

To kill Itachi and to restore his clan. As close to the first words he’d ever heard the kid speak, they’d stuck with him.

It seems Sasuke got all he wanted in life, after all.

 _And Sakura?_  He watches her gazing at the window with its shade closed tight, lost in thoughts that show on her face as a palpable sadness.  _No, she hasn’t really gotten anything she wanted._

He doesn’t know which he’s more bitter about.

Life as they know it is never really fair. Some injustices are harder to swallow than others. It’s particularly hard to see Sakura pining for a man she still, bewilderingly, loves, and to know that it’s not returned. That he can only be counted on to disappear for months at a time, and give her days. That to Sasuke she is little more than a means to an end. That their sex life is almost nonexistent, and completely devoid of passion — he can’t say he was at all surprised to hear that.

He’s never even kissed her. It’s an outrage.

She moans into the close silence now, lips parting as Kakashi’s mouth burns hot against her neck. He’s not ready again — he’s not as young as he once was, something he’s lamenting often these days — but she’s always yearning, needing, and he feels the strong desire to give. It’s unfair how little she has to settle for. Staggeringly less than she deserves. He knows it’s not his place to make up the difference, but she lets him anyway.

It’s safe to say neither of them is sure how it ended up like this.

Of course it had something to do with two weeks ago, and the fact that weddings are a depressing affair for thirty-something bachelors and lonely housewives alike. It had more than a little to do with the drinks in him, and how they’d effectively numbed out that pesky voice of reason.

There was a time this would have been unthinkable. But then the war happened, and they’d fought and bled and grieved side-by-side in the trenches, and it’s been a long time since they felt much like student and teacher at all.

Unfortunately, some things are more or less carved in stone, unchanged by present feelings. It’s unavoidable no matter how one looks at it. He used to be her teacher, and this would be seen as highly inappropriate, even without the damning fact that she’s married to another man.

Kakashi will never understand it. He supposes there’s no accounting for taste.

No one was really surprised, considering she’s loved him for a decade. But he’s not their teammate Sasuke anymore. It’s hard to look at him and not see the unapologetic criminal he was for so long. Uchiha Sasuke of the Akatsuki, Orochimaru’s favorite protégé, who swore vengeance and destruction on the village that gave him life. Who only evaded death or rotting in a prison cell because Kakashi was made Hokage, and because he couldn’t bring himself to destroy Naruto and Sakura like that, after all they’d done to bring him back. Sasuke who they loved despite it all, who mocked and shunned Sakura for years and who would’ve sent his hand searing through her chest if Kakashi hadn’t blocked him.

He’s quite sure the look he gave Sasuke in that moment remains his most chilling to date.

Some memories are hard to get past. But the fact of the matter is that he was officially pardoned, and showed real remorse, so the only thing to be done was forgive and forget.

Kakashi is working on the first. He knows the second is a lost cause.

He’s brought her to the brink again and she whimpers into his mouth, clamps down hard around his fingers. By now he’s aching to sink into her again but dawn is fast approaching and he reluctantly pulls away. She sits up and catches him in a kiss, one that lingers, the kind that leaves his chest heavy as he silently dresses and slips out the door.

It’s almost inaudible, the drop from the rooftop, the footsteps that fall in behind his own. Tenzou says nothing on the long walk back. He never does. The position of Hokage is bound by many things, most inconveniently the requirement of an ANBU guard at all times. Nights like this he’ll dismiss the others. Tenzou is the only one he trusts implicitly with his private shame.

  
  
“It’s not mine, you know,” he mutters after a sleepless night and hellish morning. “The child.”

Tenzou looks at him carefully from his post near the door. “I wouldn’t have asked.”

He knows this. He’d felt compelled to say it anyway. He slumps over the report in his hands, straining to concentrate on the words and absorb their meaning.

Perhaps his conscience is heavier than he’d like to think.

  
  
Though not heavy enough to keep him away for long.

It’s three nights this time instead of six. He tries not to think about how it evokes addiction, an escalating frequency that will only lead to dependence. He rides out the high in her arms and closes his eyes against the inevitable, when the warmth slips away and cold truths filter back in.

He hates that Sasuke’s always on his mind and rolling off his tongue here.

“What’ll you do when he gets back?”

“Tell him, I guess.”

For a fleeting instant he is startled, and feels foolish for it. Of course she meant that.

“Well, he’ll be happy.”

She doesn’t say anything. He suspects it’s his tone. As hard as he tries to control it, he can never quite stop resentment from bleeding through.

  
  
He leaves long before morning, feeling like she’s cross with him. But the next time they see each other it’s two days, a note passed with a brush of hands, a request that he come to her. After midnight. She’ll unlatch the back door.

  
  
“I’m going to hell for this.”

She’s in his lap and she gasps it towards the ceiling, to the night sky above.

“I’ll see you there.”

He holds her tighter, and he laughs but it’s hollow. Of course they wouldn’t be alone. One, two, three — just like always. This hell is endless.

  
  
It’s whenever she’s fixated on his eyes this intently that he knows she’s wishing he still had the red one. She might even leave the lights on if he did.

He’s been absent from this space for nearly five months now, but still he’s everywhere. The elephant in the room, because it’s  _his_  room, clearly furnished to his liking. The Uchiha crest on the walls and the big imposing bed with too many pillows that faintly smell of his hair.

It’s turning Kakashi vindictive. He catches himself wishing Sasuke will turn up suddenly, one night after he’s left, and smell him on her. Then they’d definitely fight, and she’d maybe have the courage to tell him what he needs to hear.

It never turns out right, even in his head. He can’t even fantasize without his conscience chiming in. And it’s always right, and he often ignores it, but this time it leaves only truth ringing in his head.

They can’t afford to let him find out.

Because he knows Sasuke, and he knows he’s a stubborn bastard where it counts. It doesn’t matter that she’d conceived months before Kakashi had ever touched her. Sasuke will never believe the child is his if they’re born without the Sharingan.

He doesn’t even want to imagine how cold he would be towards Sakura after that.

  
  
The longer he’s been gone, the more it starts to feel inevitable. He has to come back eventually, and if they’re still doing this when he does, the secret’s out in the worst way possible.

Sakura is in the shower, and Kakashi’s been steadily preparing himself since the moment she turned on the water. The door opens and she steps out, toweling her hair. He doesn’t look at her.

“I’m not sure how much longer we can go on like this.”

She doesn't move. She’s deathly quiet while it sinks in. When she finally replies her words quiver with anger thinly veiling a deep hurt.

“So, what. You want me to leave him and marry you?”

His voice is low in warning. “I didn’t say that.”

She gives him a wry look. “You want me to leave him and still fuck you every night in secret.”

Again he doesn’t think it wise to answer directly. “You’re not happy.”

“But how can I leave him? He’ll need an explanation.”

“That you’re not happy! Tell him that. God knows you’ve told me enough.”

“And what good will it do?” He hates the resignation in her eyes as she says it, the almost-smile. “You know how it’ll go. He’ll say he’s sorry, and that he’ll try to be home more, and some reason will come up that he has to leave. And it’ll seem important, so who am I to stop him? And we’re right back where we started.”

“I don’t know. Figure it out.” When she only sighs in exasperation he feels the last of his patience snap. “I can’t be what fills the spaces between you two. That’s too fucked up, Sakura, and you know it.”

He hates that this is his last sight of her before he leaves. Naked and stricken, her hair dripping on the floor.

  
  
There’s a letter in his mailbox and it isn’t for him. It takes him a moment to process the name. Her name. Her  _maiden_  name. With his as the forwarding address.

Rarely has he felt a curiosity this strong, but he holds out. Hands it to her in his office, still sealed. It’s the first time they’ve been alone in weeks.

“Thank you,” she says rather stiffly. He expects her to walk out, not tear it open right there. But she does, and her eyes scan the letter, and when she looks at him again — he can’t believe it — she smiles.

It’s small, but it’s a start.

“I got the apartment I was hoping for.”

He blinks, momentarily too dumbfounded to do anything else. “Good.”

She gives him a real smile, and bites it back, and this time she really does leave.

But not without the last word. “I’ll let you know when I’m settled.”

Very good indeed.

 

 


End file.
